By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – If an area group has its way, local veterans’ trips to see a doctor could get a lot shorter.

The Veterans Administration has targeted northern Cumberland County for a new outpatient clinic. The decision could send VA doctors to Freeport or Brunswick.

However, a growing group of people from Lewiston-Auburn – including veterans, health care professionals and politicians – have begun lobbying the VA to bring the clinic here, instead.

“We have 11,000 veterans right here in L-A,” said Jerry DeWitt, commander of the Lewiston post of the Franco-American Veterans. “It’s hard for them to get to Togus.”

Currently, the Togus VA Medical Center, located outside Augusta, is the closest place for local veterans to meet with their doctors or obtain prescriptions.

The new facility, classified by the VA as a “community-based outpatient clinic,” would offer primary care for someone who could be treated in a doctor’s office. Specialty care or treatment requiring a hospital setting would still be referred to Togus.

Even so, it would be a great help to local veterans, whose average age continues to climb.

Five such clinics are already in service in Saco, Bangor, Calais, Caribou and Rumford.

A decision on the new clinic could be years away, warned Jim Doherty, a spokesman for the Togus hospital. Parts of the bureaucracy’s restructuring plan were first announced last May.

However, Togus leaders are listening to DeWitt, Doherty said.

DeWitt and others have collected more than 1,000 signatures, including those of the leaders of all 14 Lewiston-Auburn veterans groups. The petitions and letters of support were presented to VA leaders at Togus last week.

And for two days next month, DeWitt plans to park a donated RV in the parking lot of the Auburn Wal-Mart, collecting signatures and enrolling people into the VA system.

U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, who serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has pledged his support.

“I have been working with local, regional and federal officials within the VA to help move this process forward,” the Democratic congressman said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

State Sen. Peggy Rotundo is also among the supporters.

The sheer size of the local veteran population deserves the attention, the Lewiston Democrat said Wednesday.

“About 16 percent of all Maine’s vets live here,” she said.

The population is substantial in Cumberland County, too.

According to the VA’s own numbers, the state’s most populous county also has the highest number of veterans, almost 30,000 in 2001.

By comparison, Androscoggin, Oxford, Franklin and Sagadahoc counties combined have fewer veterans.

The raw numbers tell an incomplete story, though.

Much of the VA’s funding is determined by enrollment. In Cumberland County, 17 percent of the vets have enrolled. The number jumps to 25 percent in Androscoggin County. By 2010, the VA estimates that 50 percent of vets here will be enrolled.

“It all carries weight,” said DeWitt, who also cites the increasing involvement in local groups by women veterans as potentially helpful. Local women, including Rosemarie Lane of Lisbon and members of the Marine Corps League, have become vocal spokeswomen for the area, DeWitt said.

In 2003, Lane took office as the first woman state commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New England.